Of women—which, if taken all in all
With what he did say, would buy many horses.
Though nowadays he's not so much for women:
"So few of them," he says, "are worth the guessing."
But there's a worm at work when he says that,
And while he says it one feels in the air
A deal of circumambient hocus-pocus.
They've had him dancing till his toes were tender,
And he can feel 'em now, come chilly rains.
There's no long cry for going into it,
However, and we don't know much about it.
The Fitton thing was worst of all, I fancy;
And you in Stratford, like most here in London,
Have more now in the Sonnets than you paid for;
He's put her there with all her poison on,
To make a singing fiction of a shadow
That's in his life a fact, and always will be.
[52]
